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23 August 2012

Too Bright on Earth

Sometimes, you are walking, or driving, during the day, and all of a sudden it strikes you that today, daylight won't do. The feeling in your gut, the sounds that hit your eardrum, all make little sense in daylight. Today, you need daylight to give way to night. This need is an aesthetic one. You are not goth, and you are not hungover. Still, the light feels foreign to your pupils, and your senses are adjusted to a nighttime that isn't there. Phantom nighttime, like a limb that should be shading your eyes but doesn't. It is strange you should be in this mood, considering the time you spent all winter sitting by the window, wishing for sunlight, yearning for the heat of summer. Yet now that the sun is digging into your senses, all you want is nighttime to manifest itself in its iconic colours; dark blue and yellow streetlights to replace the golden rays of the sun. And your thoughts are set to music filled with draughts, the tinny, isolated sounds of a trumpet, dark blue and wire bristles brushing against drums. Think Night on Earth (soundtrack), the "Mood" segments. You want the brightness to go away, you want your face to be lit only partially by the kind of light that hides more than it reveals. You want the people around you reduced to shadows, lonesome and brushing past you like ghosts. You want to float solitarily in this backdrop, content in the somnolence it exudes, lost in thought with an empty stare in your eyes while the trumpet breathes velvet into your neck.